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Demonstrate your impact with the h-index
The document discusses the h-index, a metric used to measure researcher impact. It defines the h-index as a single number that starts with your first citation and increases as more papers are cited. It also discusses how to find your own h-index using IRIS, Web of Science, Scopus or Google Scholar. The document interprets the h-index, noting it measures consistency of citations rather than absolute impact. It provides some tips on using the h-index and cautions not to over-emphasize the single metric.
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Demonstrate your impact with the h-index
- 1. www.le.ac.uk/library Demonstrate your impact withthe h-index Ian Rowlands University Library Research Festival 2014 Research Bytes 5
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- 3. A new phenomenon Numbersof published papers on the h-index 6 19 31 63 115 145 173 224 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 Papers Source: Scopus July 2013
- 4. • What isthe h-index? • How do I find mine? • Interpreting the h-index
- 5. What is theh-index? This slide contains an embedded video. Hover your cursor at the bottom of this screen and click play.
- 6. What is theh-index? • A single number that starts with your first citation and accumulates over your research career • It starts easy but gets progressively harder • Summarises your broad research impact
- 7. Advantages of theh-index • Simple: easy to generate and easy to understand • Valid: correlates well with career achievements and soft judgments about reputation • Credible: difficult to game • Flexible: any set of papers can have an h-index
- 8. How do Ifind mine?
- 9. How do Ifind mine? • If you have an IRIS account, go to My Profile
- 11. Professor Michael RBarer Department of Infection, Immunity and Inflammation All links at Leicester: 176 H-Index: 24 (Web of Science); 26 (Scopus)
- 12. Professor Michael RBarer Department of Infection, Immunity and Inflammation All links at Leicester: 176 H-Index: 24 (Web of Science); 26 (Scopus)
- 13. Professor Michael RBarer Department of Infection, Immunity and Inflammation All links at Leicester: 176 H-Index: 24 (Web of Science); 26 (Scopus) Web of Science and Scopus index different journals and may give you different h-indexes. For this reason it is important to always quote your source database, as above.
- 14. Maximising your IRISh-index • IRIS calculates your h-index `on the fly’ based on your list of approved publications • If you feel your h-index is too low, make sure that your IRIS profile – includes papers written at other universities – doesn’t have any papers pending approval – is enabled for automatic search in Scopus and Web of Science (in Settings) – has all your name variants and details of previous addresses (better still, use researcher identifiers)
- 15. If you don’thave an IRIS account … • Find your h-index in Web of Science or Scopus by – running a comprehensive author search – selecting all your publications – running the citation analysis tool • Google Scholar works differently: you need to set up a personal citation profile via your Google account
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- 17. Interpreting the h-index •Tom – 60 papers – 6,000 citations – 100 citations per paper • Harry – 60 papers – 6,000 citations – 100 citations per paper
- 18. Interpreting the h-index •Harry – 60 papers – 6,000 citations – 100 mean citations per paper • Tom – 60 papers – 6,000 citations – 100 mean citations per paper h-index = 20
- 19. Interpreting the h-index •Harry – 60 papers – 6,000 citations – 100 mean citations per paper • Tom – 60 papers – 6,000 citations – 100 mean citations per paper h-index = 20 h-index = 40!
- 20. 0 200 400 600 800 1,000 1 11 2131 41 51 Tom (h=40) Harry (h=20) Rank order of paper Numberofcitations Interpreting the h-index
- 21. The h-index measures consistencynot absolute impact. 0 200 400 600 800 1,000 1 11 21 31 41 51 Tom (h=40) Harry (h=20) Rank order of paper Numberofcitationsforeachpaper Interpreting the h-index
- 22. The h-index measures consistencynot absolute impact. Quite a few Nobel laureates have fair to middling h-indexes. 0 200 400 600 800 1,000 1 11 21 31 41 51 Tom (h=40) Harry (h=20) Rank order of paper Numberofcitationsforeachpaper Interpreting the h-index
- 24. Some dos • Dotake care to check your publication lists for accuracy and completeness: the h-index is not externally audited • Do check out Scopus and Web of Science: you may be falling between the cracks • Do remember that h measures consistency rather than `absolute quality’
- 25. Some don’ts • Don’tcompare your h-index with that of an older or younger colleague • Don’t compare your h-index with someone working in a different field • Don’t put too much emphasis on a single number
- 26. Useful links • Howto find your h-index in Scopus – http://tinyurl.com/h-scopus • How to find your h-index in Web of Science – http://tinyurl.com/h-websci • How to find your h-index in Google Scholar – http://tinyurl.com/h-scholar
Editor's Notes
- #3 Jorge Hirsch, physics professor at University of California San Diego published a paper in PNAS in 2005. In it he proposed a new way to evaluate the research impact of an individual scientist.The paper seems to have arisen out of disillusionment with the journal impact factor:Hirsch claims he was having getting his controversial work on superconductors accepted in top journals. But they still go t cited and he set out to find an altrnative.By the way, H stands for `highly cited’ not Hirsch
- #4 Rapidly growing interest
- #7 Hirsch showed that total citations, N was typically N = 4h2 or h=square root of N/4
- #8 SIMPLICITYVALIDStudies show strong correlation with peer judgments of reputation, Nobel and other prizes, etc.CREDIBLETypically, a physicist with h=24 will have 2,300 citations. (N=4h2)FLEXIBLEResearch team DepartmentUniversityJournalcountryTopic– the h-index of the h-index is 48 (Scopus). H squared? Slice and dice.You could compare the impact of cardiovascular research in the UK, France and Germany using the h-index.
- #14 For about 50% of people, h will be the more or less the same (+/- 2_ in both. But there are exceptions. Stephen Hawking (Scopus 19, WoS 59). 5% bigger wos 45% bigger scopus
- #18 Who has the greater impact?
- #23 Modelled on real life example of Harry Kroto, Nobel chemistry laureate for discovery of buckminsterfullerenes. Huge lasting impact but on the basis of a small number of papers. You don’t get any extra credit in h for citations > h
- #24 Let’s look at an example
- #26 AGECan’t expect a post doc and emeritus to be comparable. Could try m or H-5DISCIPLINEH tends to be bigger in the big sciences (well funded, lots of researchers, big teams) thn in say maths (the opposite usually, plus shorter reference lists)SINGLE NUMBERWouldn’t buy a 5-door car or expect a diagnosis on temperature alone, why different for something as complex as research impact